Brothers of Arms

[Gert]

The whole "old soldiers vs new soldiers aggro" discussion has been something that's been going since the changes with 1.05 patch - mainly on TestLive...but it seems that finally things may be resolved:

This issue has been a *pain* to debug. Today we found a really bad issue with the Irritate ability that can cause some really strange hate calculations. We are hoping to push out a fix this this specific issue soon. Everything right now points to that specific issue.

and

Cry of Havoc is also an offender, but not as bad as Irritate. It's a low level problems with hate calculations, so all similar abilities will be fixed by proxy. (Might be a few combos as well)

It'll be interesting to see if this does get fixed and how it'll change some players...

The issues seems to be not aggro via DPS but by the changes that happened with combos/abilities in Def Stance in 1.05; those playing around that time will have noticed a difference in aggro and those new to AoC/soldiers won't see any difference except that some soldiers keep aggro well and some don't.

Hopefully as a 2008'er Soldier this whole issue is resolved...but we'll see

[Saerhimnir]

This is good news indeed at least for us who feel gimped when co-tanking with some players.
Might be time for a polearm spec again

[Mistery]

Might be time for a polearm spec again

[Avaddon]

agro is a F^ mess and cant be fixed,,, fix one side you ruin other..if game was only guards or dts or coqs then have some logik bt since there is 3 more classes that can tank equal is never goin to fix with no ruin other class... conqs cry and i have play with conqs that are like mob is stuck in them.. and from the other side guard or dts that you cant take agro from them.. some are new gen some old ..so i ask how you fix the playstyle and the gear that someone haves??
no way..plus aas counts in that feats and dps also..latency grup buffs realy why you think that is goin to efect you guys in a good way if the fix something that can make agro even worst from now?every time they change fix something they ruin all work you have done to learn something.and and dont talk about soldiers talk about guards most or conqs ..dts dont have agro combos like it or not so is a f*(

[Avaddon]

and since my half post is missed from here,, i say is ok to have fix equal iritades and cry of havocs 4 all gen soldiers bt this means nothing realy in end since is games mech F(*

[Gert]

It's been narrowed down to just Irritate + the 3 class specific AoE taunts:

This bug affects :
* Irritate (for all solder classes)
* Cry of Havoc (Guard)
* Seal of Chaos (DT)
* Retaliation (Conq)

Combos are not affected, so all other sources of threat will remain unchanged. Taunt abilities are using threat values from the combo system. It simply the threat you would generate by doing combos for N seconds.

If you have any concerns after the fix is out, please share it here on the TL forum. This can definitely make drastic in the game.

Just have to see when it hits TL if the people reporting Taunt on combos not working in Def Stance on old Soldiers...hopefully we'll see soon

[Gert]

Thing are looking pretty good here as well. We have done a lot of testing today with positive results. This fix is now in the candidate for the 2.7 patch.

And yes, reserve judgement until the fix is out. Having an ancient bug like this resolved can completely change tanking in the game. We might need to look closer at threat tools in the near future.

[Gert]

2.07 (aka 2.7) is on TL now...

[Gert]

The age of the character is not factored into the calculations. It's was just an artifact of what order characters are stored in the npc's hate list. This bug was only related to what we call "Irritation hate". It's a special hate type that decays over time. Taunt abilities adds a base amount of physical hate + a large amount of irritation hate (that decays over time).

To *greatly* simplify this problem :
One of the problems was that irritation hate never decayed for some soldiers (based on the order they are iterated in memory on the server). It also caused other soldiers irritation hate to decay instantly. If the bugged soldiers stopped using taunts, the problem would just escalate. Goad do not take irritation hate into account (hello 1.5.7!) , so when the bugged solders non-decaying irritation hate build up higher hate values that what goad would provide.. Goad would not work.

The only "hidden" differences between solder classes is the bonus hate they gain while doing combos in defensive stance. Irritate is identical for all solders. The other abilities are slightly different. I hope this should give you something to play with.

And yes, we will go through combos, dps etc to make sure things makes sense. Especially the +hate% modifiers. We have done this more than once since the issue surfaced.

Some testing has been done and one of the outcomes is:

So for non-guards a high DPS and a decent amount of hate (~8%) is needed to swap with guards.

[Minoc]

I knew it... I KNEW IT!

I KNEW there was a reason that my tanking sucked . All joking aside though this is a significant issue and it's going be interesting to see how things play out.

[Gert]

Some interesting results coming out from 2.7 - definitely will need some testing for our RT tanks when it goes live.

Oh, and a very important quote from TL that all tanks should stick to :

Generating too much hate is just as noobish as not generating enough.

[Gert]

2.7 info

This week if we are lucky. Maybe even tomorrow. Time will show. If not, then next week is very likely.

[Idaho]

Been in W2 today with my brute conq, it felt as it was completely different tank now. No problems whatsoever — or is it because other tanks sucked?

[Saerhimnir]

Found this comment made by Floryn on the TL-forums, might be useful to reflect on...

Oh PS
overall aggro vs dps decreased by 20% , got a full set of tests to back my claims up, but for now I will enjoy the show, it's again one of those rare circumstances (2700-3200 DPS pet necros, buffed by proper TOS) the masses will never experience ^^.

Had a similar comment from Horae yesterday also, she felt she was pulling aggro easier than before, I put it down to my polearm specc v.s. S&B but there might be more to it.

[Alb]

I think that's why Tjan's suggestion of bringing a DPSer to the aggro training could be a good idea

[Gert]

BoB has done some good testing pre and post on TL; their quote of

Generating too much hate is just as noobish as not generating enough.

still seems to hold - in fact, Floryn made several posts which are good in terms of hate and from what I've seen pre and post update it holds true...

We'll look at some runs soon to get our tanks working smoother for the harder content in AoC.

First test run on TL is booked in so we need the tanks in RT, healers + dps signing up so we can test and tweak things.